


Kiss of Death

by Bees_Pen



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Sex, F/M, I'm still doing it..., Inspired by James Bond, James Bond References, Maybe Cliched, Mentor/Protégé, Spy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7822495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bees_Pen/pseuds/Bees_Pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petyr Baelish is an unruly but highly effective agent who is left mystified when a redheaded woman ruins his latest operation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And He Strikes Like Thunderball

**Author's Note:**

> This idea's been in my head for a little while, and I know it's perhaps a little cheesy but I like James Bond movies and I like GoT, and I like Petyr & Sansa together. So why not?
> 
> I'm also really sorry for being crummy at summaries.
> 
> Hope it's okay!

_**2013** _

_**Singapore City, Singapore** _

The boy had no clue what was about to happen.  That up in one of the endless floors of darkened balconies overlooking the casino bar was a man setting his sights to put a bullet in his head.  He had watched him through the lens of his rifle the entire night and mercifully let him get drunk, let the casino earn a few thousand dollars out of him, but it was nearing the time.

Eyes straining, he made sure the briefcase was still by the boy’s feet. 

His cheeks were getting sore after leaning against the gun for so long, the metal now hot and sticky with his own heat, and knee numbing against the marble floor.  The fear was that his limbs were fused into their position; that he wouldn’t react when the opportunity called for it.

Fifth drink of the night.  The young man no longer had to say a word even if he could, he just had to tap his hand on the surface of the bar and the bartender would get to work dutifully, as they all did when they got tipped so well.  The boy turned back to the young lady he had approached after the second drink.   Even with his decent looks and arrogance, one drink didn’t afford him enough courage to go up to this girl.  She was beautiful. 

But she was an obstacle. 

Her scarlet head now kept blocking the chance for a clean shot, or she’d be directly behind him so the bullet would go straight through the boy to her.  The rule was no collateral damage.

The bartender placed the drinks on the granite surface, but instead of the boy picking them up, the girl did; and as she took them both in hand she paused, then looked up in the gunman’s direction.  Her eyes seemed to find him instantly, catching him with a knowing look; a flash of lightning.  His heart clenched. With fear, disappointment.  Several other uncomfortable sensations. 

He tore his face away from its prop on the gun to look at her properly. She knew he was there in the shadows.  Had known he was there the whole time.

“Fuck…” he breathed. 

He almost started to retract the weapon and his body tensed in anticipation of running.  But she turned around and handed the drink to her consort.  They were now facing each other, the attractive boy and girl, both leaning against the bar with their profiles angled to him.  The perfect shot.

Now the question was, should he kill her too? He couldn’t have witnesses, but now she was almost helping him by holding the boy in conversation at this position.

He made his decision in an instant, snapped his body back into stance and took the shot.  The bullet whispered out of the silencer and met its target.

It felt like a delayed reaction.  The boy stood suspended in death for a moment before he dropped to the floor.  The girl’s scream, the glasses smashing, guards swarming around the body.  Some of them looking up at the fifteen floors of dark galleries that surrounded the atrium.  Where was the boy facing when he got hit? Which direction did the bullet even come from? 

While everyone was distracted by the body the man packed his rifle and flew down the back staircase that lead to a storage cupboard he had used to get there.  No cameras and relatively unutilised access to the casino.  He slipped onto the floor without anyone noticing in the commotion and then swiftly went towards the bar.

The briefcase was gone.

The briefcase he had seen the boy come in with.  Not filled with his gambling money but something else that he had guarded so closely in wait of his meeting at the casino.

The girl.  She was gone too.

“Shit.”

His head was darting in every direction.  He couldn’t remember what she was wearing.  Silver? No.  Blue? He was too busy looking at her face, the face that could get him killed.

He ran out onto the street, instantly hit by the heat and humidity of the night.  People were dotted along the road who had no clue what had happened inside but she was already long gone.

He turned left.  Didn’t know why, but then again, he didn’t know why he did most things in this job.

After running the length of the street he had fallen into the depths of a bustling Chinatown, drowned with cheer, chatter and the incongruent music that emanated from each establishment.  This was the worst kind of place to pursue someone but the best place to disappear, so she was probably here. 

She was a redhead so it would never usually be so hard to find her, but the golden red glow of streetlamps falling upon the streets took away the advantage. 

He pushed through the crowds, hearing people protest and grumble along the way but he didn’t care.  It was only then that he saw her sharp profile between the bobbing heads, turning back at him before she appeared to turn left, and he began running.  He fought his way through banners, shop canopies and lanterns that hit him in the face and he stumbled with startling clumsiness over the odd restaurant chair as he got to the place he thought he had seen her.  A Chinese herb merchant.  Closed.  Lifeless.  No other streets to tuck into, he couldn’t see her in the crowd and there was nothing to jump up on. He even looked at the ground for a manhole.  Nothing.  No woman to be seen.

“Fuck!” He shouted.  Tens of people turned at his obscenity.  Bloody hell, he’d forgotten it was illegal to swear here.

He just began to stride down the street, away from the hubbub, as he loaded a new sim card into a cheap mobile phone.

By the time he clicked for the call he was into a much quieter, residential area.

“Baelish?” a familiar male voice asked.

“Yeh, can you put me through to her?” What a pointless exercise it was to go through her minion.  She had never failed to take a call from him.

There was a click and then, “What is it Baelish?” Her voice was always stern with an undercurrent of exasperation.  He had no clue if it was like this with all the other agents or just him, but after years in this job it was, rather inexplicably, one of his few feelings of comfort.  Maybe it was the constancy he liked.

He breathed deeply. “It’s done, he’s dead.”

“Okay.  Well then get on a flight back to London as soon as you can.”

“The briefcase...”

“Your task was to kill Joffrey Baratheon and you did.  I said nothing about the briefcase – ”

“It was taken by a girl – ”

“Did you follow her?” She sounded even more unhappy that usual.  Accusatory even.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because I specifically asked you to remain unseen.  Clearly _that_ was the priority over your blasted ego-trip to get something I didn’t even ask for.”

He scoffed. “Everyone was too distracted t– ”

Her voice dropped an octave.  “Just get on a plane, Baelish. Now.”


	2. I'm Going to Suspend my Senses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, thanks so much to everyone for the kudos and comments on the first chapter - I'm so glad people are liking the idea! I only hope I can keep it up.
> 
> So this chapter is a "get to know Petyr Baelish (in this AU)" with homage being paid to some Skyfall and Spectre scenes.
> 
> (P.S. any random references to other international intelligence forces are not meant to be offensive in any way. I'm sure they're all as bad/good as each other)

An intense pain seared through his eyes.  _She_ ’d found him, no doubt - the redheaded - and he hadn’t even realised.  Now she was torturing him in some seriously fucked up way.  He bet she was Russian. Or German.  They loved dreaming up this stuff…

But no. 

Eyes peeled open and he realised he was alone in his flat, staring at the bare walls, sprawled and tangled amongst his white sheets in a state of semi-undress.  The pain was simply that of an extremely hungover man waking to the curse of the sun.  He hadn’t felt this in years.

A fuzzy night of broken memories came back to him.  The boy he shot, Chinatown, a Malaysian barman, the girl who stole his briefcase.  She’d featured heavily in some particularly troublesome dreams, possibly nightmares.

No, he hadn’t got on a plane as he was ordered to.  Instead he had mulled over the possible ways _she_  got away from him; and when he’d discounted every option from picking locks to magic, he fell into one of the darkened bars with generic lounge music – “muzak” at is was ridiculously termed – and hoped he’d find the answer at the bottom of a couple of bourbons. 

He had met a man in Japan once, a dwarf – a very smart dwarf – who had sold him the idea of 'drunken clarity.'

“There is a point,” the small man had hiccoughed over the rim of his glass, his arm wrapped around a pretty Japanese woman, “when the liquor relaxes your mind, when all those budding thoughts that your inhibitions usually cut off are allowed to run wild.  There are answers in those thoughts.  _That_ is drunken inspiration my friend.” He’d then given a cheeky smile and knocked back another dose of _sake_.

The dwarf hadn’t found clarity that night and Petyr hadn’t found it last night.  If such a state of mind did exist then he’d gone way beyond it and he was paying for it today. 

Now he had to get on a plane for fourteen hours.

Crumpled shirt, sunglasses, and frown at the ready, he was sporting his best hangover look. The man behind the glossy check-in counter was concerned before he even scanned his passport.  Then the usual: a subtle onscreen alert, he calls a shift manager, Petyr gets ‘escorted’ to a room that often looks like a prison but has coffee making facilities to make you feel it isn’t.  All this while the staff quiver as they take his bag away, dense with God knows what but it wasn’t clothes.  Then he gets given a seat in business class.

A woman, not completely unattractive, who had been sitting next to him and snatching eager glimpses tried to make idle conversation. 

“So what do you do for work?” She had asked with a bright-eyed and bushy tailed look about her that really irked him when he felt this lousy.

“I’m a British Civil Servant at the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs,” he replied effortlessly.

“Oh…” Her eyes had shifted in thought, deciding whether or not it was worth going any further, and then eventually she had made her choice and fallen into silence.  A normal person may have asked what she did in return, cared enough to be polite.  He didn’t.

He couldn’t help but smirk into his drink.  Yes, his tedious fake job title was usually enough to kill these conversations and afford him uninterrupted peace.  If it wasn’t then he was, of course, sufficiently well versed in the affairs of his fake position to keep up a conversation but he _really_ hated talking about irrigation systems and hours of sun.

 

**_London, United Kingdom_**

When he finally landed in London, legs heavy like lead and head fuzzy with drink and altitude, he remembered he hadn’t actually thought about where he was going.  He’d been in the Far East so long that he had nothing here.

He was walking to the taxi rank when a dark blue car with tinted windows pulled up and opened the door slightly. No way was he getting in there without seeing who was inside.  London was the spy capital of the world –

“Just get in, Baelish.” As if she had heard his thoughts, his Boss’s irate voice interrupted.  The severity was so much more potent in person.

Force of habit had him survey his surroundings and then he slipped in.

“You’ll have to forgive me," he explained calmly, "the last time I was picked up like this I was shackled and repeatedly plunged in water for the next 5 hours.”

She pursed her lips. “Sorry that took so long.  The Chinese are notoriously difficult to negotiate with.”  She looked out the window, “Still, we got you out.  And you’re alive, so that’s something after the stunt you pulled in Singapore.”

“Three years out of the country and this is how you greet me?” He smirked, “I was going to say how time has served you so well, Olenna.”

“Hmm.  Well you look old and tired, Baelish.” He had to admit that this disheveled, sleep deprived version of himself was not his best but that was unduly harsh, surely.

“Would you mind if we put off this retirement speech of yours?  I’ve got a migraine.” He huffed, forming a circle of condensation on the window.  She was bringing this topic up more and more.

“I’ve said several times, it won’t be retirement, you’ll be given a position of greater control – ”

“Behind a desk?” He raised an eyebrow at her, shook his head, “No deal.”

She turned to the window and watched the dank grey streets of London go by, people dodging puddles and battling umbrellas as they try to figure out which direction the drizzle was falling from. 

“You are conceited, cunning and completely unpredictable… It makes you a very skilled agent but an unruly one.” Olenna always spoke matter-of-factly and with gravitas. “I can never be sure whether _I’m_ being dragged into your mind games along with all those fiends.  I’m never sure if you would defect.  Somehow I feel the service to our country is merely incidental to whatever else you get out of this vocation.”  Her eyes flickered from buildings to his face.

“And this is your reason for pulling me out of the field?  To keep an eye on me? Because I don’t completely obey orders?” His eyes caught on a ginger man on the street.  The colour was like a red-rag to a bull now, regardless of who it was attached to.

“You make it sound like a small thing.”  She was getting angry. “MI6 is based on trust and patriotism, Littlefinger.” 

He grimaced slightly but turned his face further to the window so she wouldn't see.  That was the alter ego he went by with some of these terrorist organisations.  They didn’t know his true name or allegiance, they could hardly agree on his appearance, but many organisations knew of the man with crafty eyes. Littlefinger.  Most thought he was a hired-gun.

Maybe he was.

She broke his thoughts. “How did she get away from you?” 

“I don’t know.  She disappeared in the middle of the street.  I’ll find out who she is, she must have been trained somewhere…”

His pulse quicken as he started to get riled up about this again.  He was acting like he’d never been outdone before but, of course, he had.  It was part of this job to be up against the best, sometimes you lose and sometimes you win, but he always knew _how_ they did it; they’d have squeezed their car through closing gap or something and he didn't get there in time.  Petyr always knew how to get to them later and he inevitably did. 

Yes, he’d been outdone plenty of times but never _outwitted_ like he had been last night. He didn't even know where to start looking for her.  That really got to him.

“She must have been trained very well to get away from you.” Olenna chimed. 

“I do believe that is the closest thing you’ve given me to a compliment.  Unless I’m meant to count conceited and unruly as high-praise.” He smiled slightly out the window as they crossed the Thames. There may be a constant clamminess in the air and grey gloomy clouds that just never budged, but even like this London was the most stunning city in the world to him. Old spires against the shimmering new glass towers, the relics of post-boxes and cobbled streets from times past, and the ferocity of the river that ran through the heart of it.

The car pulled into the darkness of the agency’s parking lot.

“I want you to go straight for your check-ups and service tests in the lab. We’ll have your residence sorted by this evening.”  The weight of her words swiftly pushed him out of the car and it had disappeared again, leaving him alone in the shady lot.

* * *

The lab had changed since he was last here.  It wasn’t the beige grime colour of the original 60s buildings where each surface was tumbling with wires and electric components.  Like the whole interior, it had been modernised, supposedly because it had begun to look tired but everyone knew the real reason.

White walls, white surfaces, polished metal and purified air.  It was meant to be clean.  No memories. No nightmares.

A click of some heels from behind and a young woman made his way towards him.

“Mr. Baelish, nice to see you again,” she smiled warmly.  It was hard to see if there was a lie behind it.

“Margaery.” Thankfully it came out without betraying his surprise.  “A quartermaster.  You’ve done well.” He smiled back.  She _had_ done well to get to the position before she was 30, but then, the Tyrell name tends to do that here.

He would take issue with Olenna about this later.

She led him into some of the separate rooms off the side.  Got him to raise arms and breathe deeply plenty of times as she pushed cold metal implements against his skin.  He’d removed his shirt with great reluctance when she asked him, and then couldn’t help but feel a twinge when he caught her writing _“large scar, torso, navel to collar,_ ” under the ‘identifiable markings’ category of her form.  Most people had a small birthmark or tattoo.  He had this ghastly thing, like a man torn in two.

“Stand-up straight.”

“I am.” He tucked against the metal measure at his back.

“That’s better.  I thought you’d shrunk since your last check-up.”

“I’m not that old that I’d be shrinking.” He definitely let his mild outrage be heard from behind the smirk.

She smiled, again. “39,” she stated.  He thought it sounded rather youthful but her tone said differently.

Next she was sliding a cuff over his arm and taking his blood pressure, swabbing his cheeks, checking ears and throat.  He felt like a dog on a trip to the vet.

“So, am I dying?” He joked when she finally finished.

“Yes, but no faster than you should be.” She was distracted by her furious note taking. “You should report for the fitness assessment, then you can go on to the fire-arms tests and psychological review.”

“Psychological review?”

“Yes.” She walked behind him as he sat on a stool and swabbed his neck with a cool liquid, then picked up another one of her devices but he no longer protested or asked her why. “We’ve implemented a psych review as part of our new policy.  We think it helps identify some underlying issues that may concern us about our field agents.  You know, PTSD, nervous tendencies, rogue behaviour –” 

 “Christ! Fff – ” He gritted his teeth in pain. She had clamped some kind of large needle into his neck.

“Sorry.  Maybe I should have told you it would hurt.” She sounded almost bored.

“What _the hell_ was that?” He tenderly nursed his cramping neck.

“An electronic chip.  It allows us to track your movements and some of your vital functions from wherever you are in the world.  Boss’s orders, I’m afraid.”

He rolled his eyes, “I think she’d like to keep me on a tight leash.”

“Don’t think of it as too personal, all our agents have it,” she gave him the sweetest of sweet smiles that told him otherwise. “You can go.”

* * *

His firearms test went very well, as usual, although he wasn’t one of those that liked to use guns very often.  In most cases his mind was enough to get out of the tricky situations.

It was fair to say the physical, on the other hand, was a bit of a stretch.  He had good stamina and decent strength for a man of his build but he was not a large man; and there was possibly some truth behind the concerns over his age since he could feel he wasn’t quite in the same shape.  He could do the same things at the same intensity, but it took longer for his body to recover afterwards, or maybe it’s because he was hungover and weary from his travels.  Something told him Olenna knew he was worse for wear when she sent him for his check ups.

Now he was sitting in a room waiting for his psychologist (or interrogator) to take a seat opposite him.  To the side was a prominently placed video camera on a tripod, one he knew would be wired straight to Olenna’s computer to watch whatever this was.  That is, if she wasn’t already standing behind the one-way mirror.

A slightly unkempt older man came in to the room.  A man straight out of the early 90s from the looks of it – the large spectacles drooping to half way down his cheeks and brown tweed suit. 

“Hello, Petyr.” 

He raised his eyebrow in return.  He was Petyr now?

“Hello.”

“Thank you for filling in the form earlier.”

Oh yes, the most ridiculous and tedious form he had ever filled, with stupid questions like “ _What motivates you to work as a field agent?”_ and asking him to reveal intimate details about his life that he didn’t think should matter to anyone but himself.  He’d filled in exactly what he thought they wanted, some of it was the truth, most of it wasn’t; and then he’d conceded some minor details that he knew they wouldn’t like so they’d have something to ‘discuss’ in this meeting, but nothing serious enough to cause real issue.

Spectacle man did ask him quite a few questions, some heavily loaded and almost too closely related to the issues of trust, allegiance and defection for Petyr to think this was a standardised assessment. He sneered, reflecting on the conversation he had earlier with Olenna.  This was an interrogation, almost a warning from her, delivered in the form of a ‘friendly chat’ with this wet-blanket of a man.  She was watching him.

“Now we’re just going to do a very quick word association exercise.  I’ll say a word and you tell me what comes to your mind instantly.  The first thing.  Don’t think too hard about it.”

Petyr stopped himself from rolling his eyes but couldn’t help the wry smile forming on his lips.  He let his eyes flit towards the video-camera, “Okay.”

“Daylight? The man began.

“Swim.” Petyr offered.

“Moonlight?”

“Dance.” A slight grin.

“Beach?”

“Ball.”

“Gun?”

“Shot.”

“Mind?”

“Weapon.” Petyr smirked.

“Death?”

“Inevitable.”

“Murder?”

“Necessary.”

“Love?”

“Illusion.”

“Olenna?”

He chuckled a little as he caught the camera, “Master.”

“Alayne?”

His eyes shot back to the interviewer.

“Done,” he said sternly, and then left the room.

On the other side he sat down on a chair in the corridor and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, feeling the effect of long travel and exercise in it.

He leaned forward resting elbows on knees, trying to figure out what happened.  He knew he shouldn’t have reacted like that.  He’d put it down to tiredness, but it was more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I didn't go too off base with this chapter, especially starting with drunk Petyr, but it was supposed to be a bit like Bond at the beginning of Skyfall AND I wanted him to come undone by our glamorous redhead before he even knew who she was.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think x


	3. More than Darkness in the Depths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I've published anything, a combination of life happening and battling with writing... but here's something.
> 
> I'm going to publish two chapters in quick succession because I feel like Sansa needs to turn up soon. This one is a bit more about Petyr (after his assessment last chapter). I really liked the writing of the Daniel Craig movies because they gave Bond more of a backstory, made him damaged, and I wanted to run with that by incorporating and building Petyr's backstory, so that's what this is. 
> 
> Hope you like it!

“Mr. Baelish?” He looked up from his thoughts to see a boy blinking at him expectantly: Loras, acting as secretary to his grandmother.  Petyr had almost forgotten he was waiting for something. “She’ll see you now.”

He had been called back for the results later that evening and hardly expect them to be favourable, but if Olenna thought he was going to take this lying down then she was sorely mistaken. He waltzed into the office and cut off whatever carefully scripted greeting she would spout out.  Cut the crap and get to the meat of it.

“You wanted me to fail.”  He said coolly, not taking a seat.

“Think what you like but I gave you a fair chance.”

He squinted at her. “You knew I was hungover and tired, and now you have your granddaughter overseeing my assessments.  This is all smelling a little too much like a conspiracy to me.”

She snorted in ridicule, “I don’t need Margaery to fiddle assessments.  I’m Command, and if I deem you unfit for fieldwork I can just say it – ”

“You goaded me.” He interjected calmly.

She pursed her lips.  

“About my mother, Alayne.” He sighed, “Why?”  The fact that she knew about the closely guarded secret was not a surprise considering the nature of their organisation, it was the fact that she would use it and she probably didn’t understand it.  

“We wanted to see whether you could actually show your true feelings towards anything or anyone.”

He scoffed, “You think me heartless?”

“Yes,” she answered dryly.  Quickly.  “It’s unnerving to have someone who cares so little and fears nothing. Most of us at least dread losing a child or partner, some are traumatised in the field by torture and such…but not you. 17 years of service and we had nothing.” She explained. “Except the loss of mother.  She drowned, am I correct?”

Silence. 

“A lake near your childhood home,” she elaborated, as if he would struggle to recall it.

“It’s not for you to speak about…”

“It is if it would affect you in the field.”

He only met her with a steely glare. “So you’ve found it,” he tempered himself to betray no emotion, “Another reason to sit me behind a desk: I don’t listen to orders, I’m old and I’m too torn up about my mother’s death.”

He finally took a seat at her desk, waiting out the long silence that would surely lead to the inevitable: defeat.

She sighed heavily, “I’m letting you back out.” 

His eyes shot up from tracing the ground. “What?” 

“Your assessment came back and you’re in decent shape.  Excellent marksmanship – but that was hardly in doubt – and despite having lies all over your psychological assessment form, Dr. Brooks was able to get enough from you in the interview to conclude that there was nothing serious enough to keep you from the field.  This is a young person’s game but… your day is not over.”

He chuckled in disbelief, possibly relief.

“The doctor made some interesting observations of your character,” and she began to read out of the file in front of her even though it was obvious that he took no interest. “He said you can be charming – if you want to be – but that you enjoy being tricky and provoking people, that it often comes off as arrogant and means you’re probably a loner… because no one can put up with you.”  She made a point to meet his eyes at that point.

He shrugged uncaringly, “Then I’ve clearly chosen the right job.  Operatives don’t really need… _companionship_.”

She ignored him. “However, he concludes by saying: _as a man devoid of distraction and with only a penchant for finer living, he is ideally suited for field work_ , and notes, _generally positive views towards the UK, low risk of defection_.” She looked up at him, no emotion.

He smirked. “I suppose that means you can trust me?”

“I’ll decide that, thank you.  There is still a whole page in here about your low regard for authority.  But, as I said, you’ll be back out there.”

He sat back, smugly placing an elbow on the armrest.

“He also said something about women, bad experiences or something, although I never thought of you being one to get hurt by a woman… I don’t know where he got that from…” 

“Am I excused then?” He asked plainly and stood up, forcing the conversation to a close.

“Yes, I suppose." Although she looked at him in an unsettling way, as if trying to see into him. "We’ll let you know if we need you.”

He nodded and let himself out.  Before he had fully closed the door behind him he caught the eyes of a woman in the waiting room.  The same bolt of blue, framed with pearlescent skin and waves of a familiar, haunting, shade. 

In this light, in this context, it was all so obvious he wondered how he’d missed it. His jaw set and he immediately pushed his way back into the office, slamming the door.

“She’s one of ours?  The girl?” He fumed, gesturing at the door. “And she’s a bloody Stark.”

Olenna flicked her eyes up from whatever she was writing.  “So you’ve seen her.”

“I suppose you find it funny that I haven’t slept well out of concern – ”

“Oh don’t try and fool me into thinking you cared so much about what was in that blasted briefcase.  If you really felt that way you would be jumping with joy right now, knowing we even have it. Your _ego_ was bruised because she managed to outwit you, that’s the only reason you cared.”

He gave her a discerning ‘fuck you’ face. “You still should have told me.”

“You were in so deep I hardly knew if you were alive or dead, let alone how to contact you.  The only way she had of finding you was by following the boy and knowing you'd eventually go after him.”  It shouldn't have been so satisfying to know he had caused the girl some trouble in return, she was a novice after-all and he was not, but it did satisfy him.

“Well you won’t have a problem anymore since you’ve had me microchipped.  Like a dog… You should have tried harder to find me and tell me.”

“Why? So you could try to undermine my operation? Undermine her? Or did you want to prove you didn’t need help?”

“Because she could have given away my plan.” He wasn’t the kind to rage and froth at the mouth but he hoped it was obvious from his firmness.

“Does she seem like a dunce to you? She’s well trained, as you said.”

“She’s a child.”

“She’s capable.”

“Has she heard those rumours about me and her father? What if she had decided to shoot me?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“ _I_ could have shot _her_.”

“You wouldn’t.” She said plainly. 

She was too sure for his liking. Suspiciously so. “How do you know?”

“ _She’s_ apt at taking orders so she wouldn’t shoot you unless I specifically asked.” For an instant he thought about whether she’d actually make such a command.  “As for you…”  She reached for his file again, searched for a page. 

Was this how she was going to deal with him now?  Use this poxy test as an instruction manual for him?

She recited yet another passage, “ _Despite his seemingly low regard for fellow man, Mr. Baelish seems to think of death as a method of last resort, only to be used if expressly asked or if a situation truly requires it.”_ She looked back to him, “It isn’t you observing my orders, it’s a _personal preference_ that you don’t resort to killing random people.  You think it’s messy and below you, so you always plan to avoid it.” She put the page down meaningfully.  “You wouldn’t have shot her,” she repeated.

An emotionless glare back to her but they both knew she was right.  He was beginning to hate that doctor and his damn report.

“I told you this organisation ran on trust.  I need to trust you, but you also need to trust _me_ and _my_ ability to plan an operation.  I was never going to let go of that briefcase if I could help it.”

He thought to ask what was in it but found he really didn’t care too much about it, he just wanted to be the one to have retrieved it. Petyr made to leave again. 

He sighed silently at the door, just before turning the doorknob, “You should do something about her hair, dye it or whatever.  It’s a memorable shade.”

As he strode through the waiting room, he made no effort to look but caught her in his periphery for an instant.  Head cocked and lips parted in interest, her eyes followed him out the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... what do you guys think?
> 
> I know it just seems like just another chat but I think you see some of the seeds I'm sowing. Then there are other seeds I hope you don't see. Not yet anyway!
> 
> I don't know whether you were all hoping Sansa and Petyr would be against each other but I hope this is still something you all find interesting. x


	4. For Your Eyes Only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say I'd publish this very soon and here it is! And a quick reminder to make sure you read chapter 3 because I published both within a day.
> 
> So there's a little scene where I have to smarten Petyr up a little (I realise with the hangover, travel and crumpled shirts that he's been a bit... rougher than we expect of Bond or Baelish).
> 
> The dialogue of the next scene is very much inspired by the scene in Casino Royale (2006) when Bond meets Vesper Lynd in the train. It is probably my favourite scene from the whole franchise so I wouldn't dare recreate it, I've just taken some ideas from it. There is a bit where I unashamedly use some of their dialogue with a few of my own alterations so all rights go to those writers. 
> 
> Happy reading!

It was disappointing, anticlimactic even, that he’d spent so many moments over the last three years thinking about what it would be like to be home again only to find it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, it was a beautiful city and everything was right where he left it, but he couldn’t help but feel like London didn’t want him anymore. Or he didn’t want London. Either way, it didn’t really feel like home.

The only thing that felt right was his visit to Lothor Brune. Lothor was a sartorial master with a shop on the renowned Jermyn Street, although you would probably miss the inconspicuous door, sandwiched between a boutique fine art gallery and a shop specialising in old-fashioned shaving paraphernalia. It lead upstairs to the most unassuming workshop, beige and dingy with unflattering light and stale air, but Lothor had never been about show and pomp, his work spoke for itself.

He greeted Petyr with polite questions and a warm smile, before leaving him to peruse the rolls of fine fabrics and shirting material arranged around the room while Lothor assessed some of his old suits to see if they could be saved. The tailor knew nothing of Petyr’s job and, being the soul of discretion, he never really asked, but that didn’t stop him giving perplexed looks when he saw the tatters before him. Petyr could almost hear his mind at work, wondering how the suits that were new and sent over to Japan just a year ago were now torn down the crotch, split down the back of the jacket or had terribly worn elbows.

“I think we should retire these, Petyr,” he said with a gentlemanly sigh.

“Oh? I didn’t realise they were so bad.” Of course he had. He wanted brand new suits but Lothor was a man of the ‘make-do-and-mend’ age who wanted to salvage everything, and Petyr always played along to satisfy him.

“They’re irreparable.”

There were brief grunts behind Petyr, the sound of boxes being pulled and pushed in store cupboards, but he was too distracted by the weave and softness of the grey material between his fingers and imagining what it would look like once sewn into shape.

Lothor chortled from behind him, “Don’t even bother with that stuff, it won’t a last a day. Not with you.” There it was. Artfully cutting off the sentence before it could ever be mistaken for prying. “I got you something more durable, specially shipped over from Germany.”

Petyr frowned as he walked up to the man holding out a grey jacket. Durable meant rough, heavy and clumsy – everything Petyr hated – but when he felt the fabric he was pleasantly surprised by how rich and soft it was. He shouldn’t really have doubted Lothor.

“Here, try it on.” Petyr obliged as the older man held the jacket for him to slip on. “It’s lightweight and has a small amount of give in the fabric so…”

Petyr fiddled with the cuff and collar. “I like it. Very much, actually.” Then he inspected the inside pockets, smirking at the choice of dark green lining to go with the charcoal – Lothor knew his tastes all too well.

“I was going to send this over with your next order whether you wanted them or not. You can try on the trousers if you want.”

He gave a crooked smile, “No need, Lothor, I know they’ll be perfect.”

His ruddy face glowed with a smile, “Then I’ll pack it up and be sure I make a few more sets. How’s blue and grey for you? Do you want a tux?”

Petyr simply cocked an eyebrow in answer.

* * *

A gun and a watch. Margaery had rather eagerly summoned him back to the lab, her eyes had glimmered brightly as she handed them both to him so it made him believe there was more to it all. He had fiddled with the Omega for a while before realising it was, in fact, just a watch.

He made excuses to her, said he was happy with what he had but she’d pushed them back onto him with another one of her smiles. He was rapidly learning that was her way of getting people to comply.

So now he was in the shooting gallery, clad with his new black strap and silver dialed watch (which went well with his suit, he had to admit) and a small metal case. The pistol was impressive when he took it out: matt black, with an inbuilt silencer, yet the entire gun did not measure more than 15cm in length. An impressive engineering feat, he knew. It also sounded good to shoot, nothing more than a sharp exhale when it left the barrel but a thunderclap when it hit the target. And with virtually no recoil.

He unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a few more shots before casting eyes over the other lanes. The shooters where hidden behind lane divides but he could see the targets. The one furthest to the right had a heavier weapon but wielded it with a finesse that Petyr may have been envious of. Eyes cast over another lane, a fresh target. The first shot missed the heart and went towards the stomach.

Petyr snorted a laugh.

Pathetic.

Were they really scraping the bottom of the barrel with these recruits? But just as he finished the thought, he saw two more bullets land in the same area, piercing in a cluster. Only a centimetre or so between them.

Not Pathetic. _Intention._

He latched his pistol in its hold and took slow, curious steps towards the lane until he could see who it was.

Of course it was her. Every surprise over the last few weeks was something to do with _her_. He took a step back, leaned against the rear wall with arms crossed, and watched her shoot. Sansa’s gaze was trained forward, totally oblivious to his presence.

This was his chance to get a measure of her while he could; to even out this playing field they’d found themselves on.

She was dressed very…practically, in slightly baggy sports pants and a black t-shirt, but even like this he could see she could cast quite the silhouette. Her legs…You didn’t _have to_ use your body for the job but it sometimes helped, and he imagined being wrapped in such a fine specimen before she planted a bullet in your stomach may be of some solace to her victims. She would surely have many victims.

 

He finally took the few steps toward her when he saw she’d emptied her magazine. She cast a quick glance at him before reloading; speaking before he had the chance to draw a breath.

“You look a lot more polished than when I last saw you…and a lot more composed than the first time.” She said, smiling into her gun.

Eyes narrowed. Was she actually mocking him?

“Aberrations, I assure you,” a note of sourness as he leaned against the barrier that divided each station. Chin slightly raised, he looked down his nose to continue his study.

She smirked – almost like _his_ smirk – and kept shooting, one handed. She was a decent shot, very good if he dared to admit it.

“Little bit sadistic, don’t you think?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at the target. After obliterating the stomach portion she’d moved onto the knee caps.

“Sometimes,” she took another shot, “you just need to get them to talk.” She tilted her head at her target, as if appreciating her own work.

“There are much better ways to do that than shooting their knee caps out.”

“Strange to hear that coming from the person who so easily polished off that boy in Singapore.” She returned to firing viciously the target's shoulder.

“That was an order over which I had no control.” His eyes followed the line of her face, “But if I had to get something out of him I would have been more tactical.”

Her eyes flicked left to him. “So you would’ve just talked him? Nothing more?” The tone of disbelief in her voice was a sudden reminder of her inexperience. He'd almost forgotten that she was just a kid and it was so typical of the young to do everything in a heavy-handed way, to see things simply, to want a ‘quick fix’ like death or torture.

He smirked. “Talk to him, watch him. You can tell a lot about people from the simplest actions and just a few words.” He cocked his head.

She took the bait, placing her weapon on the ledge and faced him square on, in challenge. Finally he had her undivided attention, and what a gift it was. From his previous glimpses he had gathered that she was attractive, obviously, but he had been too busy being mindfucked by her to actually _see_ her.

Those eyes of hers, unwavering as they met his, were something else. Yes, you could say they were blue, but that would be an understatement; they were where the ocean met the sky, but then set alight by something deeper within her. An untamed spirit.

“And what can you deduce about me, Mr Baelish?” A slight quirk in her brow and a smile in her eyes told him she was game. She may not like how he played, though.

“Well,” he straightened up, “I may have an advantage since I knew both your parents when they worked here, but of course, only a fool would assume a child to be a perfect reflection of them, and you…” He looked at her battered target, “…are most certainly not.”

“Should I be offended by that?” She narrowed her eyes.

“Quite the contrary. You’re ruthless but it’s born out of an ambition much greater than either of your parents had; it’s the ambition of someone who has experienced a great loss at a young age and wants to rectify it.”

He caught the micro movement of her lip tensing at the reminder of her parents’ and brothers’ deaths.

“But,” he continued, “Despite that sarcastic undertone of yours, I'm willing to bet you're not as much of a hard ball as you want us all to think. You’re very aware that people may underestimate you because of the way you look, so you overcompensate with your aggression and slightly masculine attire.” His eyes ran over her figure, veiled by her baggy t-shirt and sweatpants before meeting her eyes again. “You should know your _act_ will only get you so far in this organisation. Deal with your other issues if you want to be taken seriously.”

“I’m happy with where I am at the moment, and the path I’m on,” she said simply.

He breathed a laugh, “Bullshit.”

Shock played across her beautiful features. “Excuse me?”

“You see I’ve been trying to figure out why someone like you – ambitious and apparently highly regarded by our Boss – is confined to being my lackey. Why are you doing the odd pick-up and drop-off jobs rather than _real_ intelligence gathering? There’s a conflict in you… I can see it in your eyes.”

Her stare melted to unbridled blue innocence, throat jolting with a nervous swallow as if she’d been caught in some heinous crime. Her façade was gone.

“You’re tied to London somehow. I suppose by the remnants of your family?” He pressed.

She dropped her eyes away from him and picked up her gun to shoot again, but he held his glare over her, wondering whether she could take anymore.

“And from that reaction I can tell you feel guilty; you _want_ to go out there but you can't leave them behind. I believe you have very high standards and this limbo – between avenging the family you lost and sheltering what remains of it – actually means you achieve neither to your own satisfaction.” He then took a step closer to her, putting his hands in his pockets, feeling no threat as she relentlessly shot at the target’s head.

At some point, she didn’t realise, he’d brought his lips within inches of her ear. “Don’t be caught in middle," he whispered, "You’ll never get anything done there.”

The shots stopped and her shooting arm fell to her side as she let a shiver run through her, let the thought consume her, and he turned to leave just then.

 

“What about you?” She suddenly called after him.

Back turned to her, he allowed a frown of incredulity to form across his face. As much as he liked seeing her claws back out so soon, what did she think _she_ could do to _him_?

“What about me?” He asked, finding it hard to hide his amusement. He turned around to lean expansively, arrogantly, against the ledge leaving very little space between them. He could see she would have stepped back if she wasn’t making a show of defiance in that moment, and he rather admired that she didn't.

“You’re no mystery either, Mr Baelish,” she stated proudly.

“Well then, go ahead." He leaned in further, "Tell me what you see,” he said, raising his eyebrows with expectation.

“Alright…” Her eyes took time as they swept his body, taking every inch of him in before meeting his eyes with a glimmer, a satisfied smirk playing across her face. “From the cut of your suit you went to Oxford or wherever, naturally think human beings should dress like that, but you wear it as a privilege. My guess is that you didn’t come from money and your school friends never let you forget it, which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity, hence the chip on your shoulder and your constant need to outdo everyone. And since you assume to know what it is to be orphan, that’s what I’d say you are.” She flashed him a mischievous smile that he couldn’t help but meet.

Moments later they were still staring at each other with matching smiles, caught somewhere between comfort and apprehension. It felt like they had made some sort of shady deal, it just wasn’t clear what it was.

“Well, as much as I'm enjoying this, I believe I have a meeting to attend,” he finally said, “Until we meet again, Miss Stark,” he bid farewell with a slight bow of his head, a bygone courtesy that her presence seemed to bring out in him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know whether anyone noticed the addition of mentor/protégé tag but this is sort of where it begins. While I wanted some of the sharp Bond/Vesper dynamic, I also like the fact that Petyr is Sansa's mentor.
> 
> Let me know what you think x


	5. Feel the Chill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I should launch into apologies for...everything.
> 
> Firstly, I'm sorry for replying to comments so late. It's so great to see people interested and love reading them so I'll try to be much better when it comes to replies. Secondly, long time no post but we're all busy so I'm sure you get that. Thirdly, I'm just not happy with this chapter which is probably another reason it took ages to write. I lost my mojo and my mind kept imagining scenes that are coming up soon but that didn't help me with this chapter at all...
> 
> I've tweaked and tweaked, and now I just feel like I should push it out there so I can get on with the rest. I can't really say it's inspired by any Bond scene because I've concentrated more on developing the canon relationship this chapter. Don't worry, Bondish-Baelish with be back!

Sansa sat in the dreary cafe at a small table; so small, in fact, that their knees had kept knocking together and she had ended up sitting in an uncomfortable twist to avoid having to cast apologetic smiles every five seconds.  It was already a very awkward encounter, but he’d insisted and she had nothing better to do.  Or she hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse fast enough.

She grimaced as he pulled the tea bag out of the paper cup, leaving behind liquid the colour of dishwater, then threw in three cubes of sugar.  The sacrilegious murder of a good cup of tea.

“I think we’ll be out there within the week…” He mumbled over the clinking of his spoon.

She wasn’t really listening to Willas, but a sweet smile and some well-placed nods seemed to do the trick in concealing the fact. He was a darling – hard working, painfully earnest, perhaps a little dull but those Tyrell looks never hurt anyone.  A few years ago she may have fancied him, and his family crest.  Her mother would certainly have  _begged_  her to marry someone like him and Sansa would probably have done it.  But that was another lifetime.

He broke mid-sentence. “Are you alright?” Willas asked, dipping his blue eyes into hers with a slight smile and shades of concern.

“Yes.”  It came out short, quick and perhaps a little too eager in an effort to hide her distraction, her eyes clearly tearing away from the man she’d been watching through the window.  Willas, apparently, wasn’t the kind to pick up on these things and happily went on with his blow-by-blow account of some meeting.

“Actually,” she interjected, “Do you mind if we do this later?” 

She hadn’t really waited for an answer before making her way out of the café, chancing in front of a few cars as she crossed the road and cut through the evening commuters, eyes trained on the immaculate man with the silvered temples.  Everyone seemed to overlook him – dismiss him as just any other person – but she could never see Petyr Baelish like that.

There were stories about him, the people he’d killed, the things he’d done (you wouldn’t believe how gossipy these MI6-types could be amongst themselves).  Apparently he’d spent three months in a North Korean  _gulag_  being subjected to ‘pigeon torture’ – that is, being beaten in the chest until he threw up blood – he’s credited with killing at least four Heads of State, and single-handedly dismantled Burma’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. 

There was no way of knowing what was true and what was false, and she was pretty sure the organisation liked it that way – to be a secret to everyone including its own – so by the time Sansa had got off the plane in Singapore she was sure he was some kind of mythical creature.

Meeting him hadn’t really proven otherwise.

He had “an air” about him.  That was the phrase people used when they couldn’t explain why someone caught their eye. It was why - Sansa had told herself - she hung onto that one conversation they had weeks ago, his gravelly voice and the biting truth of it. She had nothing much to say to him right now, no real plan, but in a moment of puerility she felt she had to follow.

 

She found him looking so…unassuming, sitting there on a weathered park bench, left arm draped along the back of it, grey trench coat shielding him from the approach of autumn as he overlooked the river.  No one would think that he was one of the few men in the entire country who could take a life without question or consequence, but that was the genius of it all.

His arm twitched.

Before she’d even realised his right hand had already reached into his blazer, his gun half drawn as he turned to catch her in her approach.  He stopped as soon as he registered who it was, dropped his head down a little in relief as if to say,  _just her_.

He took a moment.  To breathe, to readjust.  To relax.  His entire body seemed to rise and fall with a long, drawn out breath. Then his eyes flew to hers and it stunned her, the darkness in them enough to make her recoil.

He seemed to chuckle quietly.  Maniacally. Unsettlingly.

“That’s some nerve you’ve got on you,” he scoffed.  But it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

Her eyes had to break from his for a second. “Would you really shoot me  _here_?” She asked. Her voice didn’t betray her fear, thankfully, but she also wasn’t foolish enough to play coy right now.  She’d spooked him and she knew how close she’d been to staring down the barrel of his gun. 

The man turned away to the ever darkening landscape once again.

“Look around you,” he said, gesturing slightly with his outstretched arm.  “We’re hidden, there’s hardly anyone here; and for those that are, it’s too dark to see…I also have a silencer on my gun and a very convenient place to throw a body…” He shrugged a little, “I’ve dealt with worse set-ups than this.”

Her eyes flitted around a little, and she subconsciously pulled at the lapels of her coat, feeling a sharp chill run through her, but she could hardly say if it as the weather or his words.

Shit.   _Shit_.  How had she not realised what she’d walked into?

The bench he sat on was the only one that couldn’t be seen from the road, being shielded by a wall and some bushes.  Tree branches of mottled green and copper leaves dipped down and cloaked the two of them so those distant people, barely distinguishable in this light, probably wouldn’t even know they were there.  After all, the only reason  _she_  knew he was here was because she’d followed him.

Countless thoughts flooded her mind: how he much he had planned, how  _little_  she had planned, how he never ‘turned off.’ Did he just sit places waiting to be shot?

“I would float,” she said suddenly, a thought escaping her.  “I suppose you have a plan to weigh down my body? I can’t imagine anyone would miss a corpse floating down the river.”

A delayed reaction, but from where she stood - standing behind him and at a slight angle - she thought she saw the beginnings of a smile.  “It would be… inconvenient if you were found too quickly.”  _Or at all_ , he didn’t add. “We can’t make anything too easy for the police and I hate it when the press gets involved… I imagine _you_  would kick up quite the media storm.”

Sansa stood, thinking.  For a moment she wondered what he might have meant by that.  The press love spies, family tragedies and rich people when they die; but for some reason that she couldn’t put her finger on, she felt he was talking about the way she looked.  _Appreciating_  the way she looked, and saying the newspapers would too.  Just when she was punishing herself for being vain, she realised he’d distracted her from her question.  But she wouldn’t ask again.

 

She could feel him thinking as he stared out into the distance, and at some point he made the decision to surrender, withdraw his left arm from the back of the bench as an invitation, of sorts, although offered under duress.

“For future reference, Miss Stark,” he continued as she slowly lowered herself next to him, “Never get yourself into a situation unless you know how to get out.” It was placidly said, but a slightly different tone and it could easily have been turned into a threat.

She could only nod at the statement.

“What are doing here?” She asked, after looking over at him several times.

“I’m on leave,” he answered lazily, “Waiting to be dispatched for my next assignment.”

“And this is how you choose to spend it?  Sitting on a bench in the dark?”

“Yes,” he said, with a palpable tone of amusement in his voice, “Why? Do you have a better idea for whiling away my time?”

She narrowed her eyes at his profile, “Are you saying you don’t have any friends you could go for a drink with? Someone special you’d like to visit? Or kids?”

He turned to give her a look: a smirk with a raised eyebrow that made her instantly regret asking the question.  It suddenly seemed so stupid to ask. “You shouldn’t tease me, Sweetling.  You’re verging very close to the truth there and you may actually hurt my feelings one day.”

She played along with a weak smile but she hadn’t actually intended to mock.  Yes, life as an agent could be lonely, but she really didn’t think a man like him would spend nights alone.  People who looked and dressed and talked like him rarely did, not unless they wanted to. 

“Anyway,” he said, “Shouldn’t I be asking why you’re here? It’s not your job to follow me anymore, you know.”

“I had a meeting at the Treasury and I saw you,” she said simply.  It wasn’t a good enough answer for him, something in his demeanor told her that and she liked it. He wasn't the only one that could be mysterious here.

He cocked his head slightly, “What about that family of yours?”

She paused, trying to twist her answer into a self-depreciating joke of some sort, like he had just done.  If he could call her  _Sweetling_  (or whatever it was) then maybe she could call him  _Honey_? Anything to distract him from an actual discussion, but it didn’t work in her mind so she told him the truth. “It doesn’t matter what time I go home, it’ll be an empty house,” she heard herself say quietly.  Her eyes went out to the inky skyline, teeth biting on a slightly chapped lip. “They’re doing their thing and I should do mine.”

She saw the tiniest movement of his head and his eyes drop down in discomfort.  That was alright, discomfort was _his_  problem, but at least it wasn’t the dreaded look of pity that she was used to; and he had the good sense not to push her further.

He rose to his feet taking in a deep breath and looked into the distance.  She thought it was all over until he, inexplicably, offered her a hand.

“Come,” he said softly, “I think we’ve had enough of this, don’t you?”

She nodded, more to herself than to him, and unthinkingly took his hand to lift herself up.  Face-to-face and under nightfall she could only see shadowy holes for eyes, and perhaps she stared too long into that darkness trying to find the unmistakable green and grey, but he let her.  Or maybe he was just as lost looking for her. 

“Do you like Japanese food?” He asked gently.

“Japanese food?” Confusion suddenly shook her from the peculiar moment, and she became very aware of her hand still lying in his, their faces being just a little closer than they should be.  Enough to feel the weight of his breath as he spoke. 

“Yes. And I don’t just mean sushi and ramen, there’s far more to it,” he added, releasing her hand and guiding her back onto the path in a casual manner.

“I like Sukiyaki,” she smiled warily. 

“Good,” and with that he continued to lead her down one of the streets.

* * *

 He was inordinately charming, to the point where she thought this couldn’t be the same man she’d met a few weeks ago.  It couldn’t be the same man she’d talked to just  _half an hour ago_.  That guy dragged out her insecurities and hurt, he mocked her, he told her she was crap at life and described how he would kill her. She should hate that guy but couldn’t, because he saw  _her_.  Not the version of herself she was selling to the world but  _her_. 

The man walking with her now, however, liked to talk of soul music, TV and vintage cars.  He was worldly and frighteningly well-informed, like some of the better men she’d dated before realising it was all a waste of time and no one wanted the emotional baggage she brought along.  This man still saw her, he just didn’t try to ruin her.

Forty minutes later, they were still walking and it felt like they’d passed hundreds of restaurants, some of them Japanese, but apparently none up to his exacting standards.  Not even the one a few roads back with monochrome décor cast under a golden glow, smelling of salt and sweet and onions, where each table had an orchid set upon the glossy surface.  The couple in the window had been tucking into some black cod whilst laughing about something, probably the starved girl staring at them through the window, mouth-watering in hunger, numb fingers begging for the warmth. It looked like the perfect place to have an intimate dinner, but then she had to shake herself. 

This wasn’t a date.  She had no idea what it was but it definitely wasn’t a  _date_ ; Petyr Baelish didn’t seem like the kind and she didn’t want to go on a date with him. She didn’t think.

They were walking down an idle street just as he clasped her elbow with his hand, directing her down a darkened alley with the other.  It was barely lit, no illuminated shop signs, no glass fronted restaurants with scenes of happy families.  And it was horribly quiet.  He couldn’t be serious. 

But then she saw his eyes under the street lamp, silver bullets targeted at her, looking expectantly and accompanied by the quirk of his brow.  When she didn’t move he gave her a knowing smile.

“I like that you’re being more vigilant now but, really?  A dark alley?  I’d like to think I’m less clichéd than that,” he said in a half laugh.

“There’s nothing more deceptive than the obvious,” she recited stiffly.  It was something she’d read somewhere.

“Sherlock Holmes.” He stated.  And of course she remembered he was right, now that he’d said it. He stepped round to face her completely, “I’m not going to kill you, Sweetling.  I didn’t kill you before and I won’t kill you now.” 

She searched his face, never being able to look into his eyes for too long.  It felt like staring into the sun.

“Ask me why.” He ordered with a note of kindness.  She felt his eyes on her neck, watching it clamp up with nerves; his gaze swept down the length of her body and back to her eyes, a flush of embarrassment flooding her face.

“Why.” Gods, she sounded like a robot. She tried again. “Why wouldn’t you kill me?”

“Because we’ve just spent the good part of an hour walking through the most surveilled city in the world together – I’d almost certainly have the police or Olenna at my door if you went missing tonight. Police I may be able to deal with, but  _Olenna_  not so much.” His eyes shot down to her leg for an instant. “Plus, I’m pretty sure you’ve got a knife strapped to your thigh,” he added with a smirk.

It explained the leery look before, but she hid her weapon well, she was careful that it never protruded out from under her skirt.  How did he know?

“What is it? Four inches?” He inquired, “It doesn’t matter, I’ve seen what you do with a gun and I’m sure I don’t want to be on the other side of that knife.”

“You're mista- ”

“There’s no need to lie, Miss Stark, I know what it’s like at those early stages - when they won’t let you keep your gun off-duty.  A ridiculous policy made by bureaucrats.” He paused, to meet her eyes with deep conviction, “Most importantly, though... I wouldn’t kill you because I have no motive.” It was the first time she could look at his eyes properly, fall into the darkness of them.  Once she was there she found it vaguely comforting.

She smiled weakly back and nodded in understanding. 

“Now, shall we go in and eat something? I'm starving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it was a bit shabby, but forgive me this one chapter? I think I got too bogged down with the points I wanted to make that I stopped thinking as freely... Is it coming across that Sansa may be coming across quite confident from Petyr's POV in these interactions but there's actually all these doubts going on in her head or when he's not looking?
> 
> Let me know what you think (I'm braced for criticism, no worries) and/or if you're still interested in where it's going and I will get back to you x


	6. Like Nothing I've Ever Known

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long for this chapter... again. There were a few points I wanted to get across and I feel like there isn't enough of the Bond vibe... I wanted it to be like those dinners with Bond and his girls but then I got over trying to make it something it wasn't and just thought I'd go for canon Petyr/Sansa. 
> 
> Hope you like it!

The restaurant was not what she expected.  An unremarkable place with shoddy paintwork, awnings black with smog and age, and makeshift signs offering _3 courses + drink = £10.50_.  Sansa wasn’t exactly a snob – places like this had saved her from a diet consisting solely of Pot Noodles, Red Bull and booze at university – but she could read a suit.  Mister bespoke suit (she suspected, since it fit him so perfectly) with a Mont Blanc pen tucked in the front pocket wouldn't, she thought, be hanging out in this kind of place.  Not without good reason anyway.

Inside, the _Japanese Canteen_ , as the restaurant was rather originally called, was a small establishment with almost painfully bright lighting, rickety tables and ukiyo-e images dotting the walls.  It was quaint, in its own way, and _filled_ with people but none of that really settled her.

She glanced over to the man beside her, his face telling her nothing.  Like a brick wall except it sometimes threw back caustic remarks and looked better.

She wondered why no one had ever thought to mention it in all those stories about him – the way he looked – the eyes, the nose, the lines of his face, the perfectly trimmed facial hair. A profound, beautiful, impenetrable mask for him to hide behind. The perfect shield to his razor-sharp mind.

A crooked smile, not quite reaching his eyes, played across his face and he cocked his head towards her.

“Are you making a study of me, Miss Stark?”

Her heart had jumped at the interruption but she managed a smile, gave a nonchalant shrug. “Somebody has to.” 

His smile grew a little at that, eyes seeming to change colour before her, bright green to gunmetal, as they drifted across her features.  She couldn’t bear to think what her face and eyes were betraying of her, she could already feel her cheeks warming.

“Mr. Petyr!”

They both tore away from each other.  An elderly man, with a rounding tummy and kindly face had appeared, she guessed from behind the beaded curtain but couldn’t be sure.  He greeted “Mr. Petyr” in earnest before turning to the young woman who had accompanied him with questions in his eyes.

“Mr. Okamoto,” Baelish called, “I hope you are well?  May I introduce you to my colleague, Sansa Stark.”

The old man smiled at her, a little gingerly she noticed, then turned back to Petyr before launching into hurried Japanese (or at least it sounded hurried but she wasn’t apt to tell). She could have sworn she heard him say her father’s name amongst it all but it was fleeting. She could have been mistaken, she thought. Slightly harder to miss was Mr. Okamoto’s eyes, darting back and forth between Sansa and Petyr, leaving no doubt to the subject of their conversation.  There _was_ something more to this.  It wasn’t just a restauranteur greeting one of his regulars, and they weren’t just talking about her as Petyr’s colleague.

Of course Baelish spoke Japanese back and, it seemed, pretty well.  Whatever he said, the other man’s face had melted from smile to concern, eyes dashed to her and back, before concluding their conversation with a stiff and singular nod.

Mr. Okamoto then plastered his smile back on and turned to her. 

“Miss Sansa, it is very good to meet you,” he said, extending an arm towards the metal topped bar to direct them. “Please,” he coaxed.

What game was this sweet old man playing?  She wouldn't give passes for old age and cute smiles.

But, nonetheless, she followed Petyr’s lead, sat on the stool next to him with the chef at work just on the other side of the bar.  Between reading orders and dishing up plates of food, he had practically thrown some menus at them.

“My Japanese is a little rusty, care to tell me what that little chat was about?” Sansa asked as she flipped open the laminated menu, of little use to her since she wasn’t familiar with most of the dishes in it, but it served as a good shield.

She saw him smirk.  “Sorry, perhaps that was a little rude of us, but he didn’t say much.” She rolled her eyes behind her menu, “He just wanted to know what I was doing with you.”

He’d have to get in line.

 

The chef wanted to know if they were ready to order and Petyr replied back in Japanese, checking the menu and holding fingers up to say _two_.  Then the menus were snatched away and Sansa looked back at him agape.

“Did you just order for me?” 

“I thought you said your Japanese was rusty?” he teased.  She must have given him quite a face because he did end up explaining. “This restaurant doesn’t have many of the dishes you’d be familiar with.  Mr. Okamoto specialises in food from the Hokuriku region of Japan – where he comes from – and they’ve got some very different things here; I thought it’d be easier if I ordered for you.”

She smiled back at him sarcastically, called the chef back.  “ _He’ll_ have this,” she said smiling at Petyr and pointing at a random dish.  The chef looked questioningly at Petyr before realising he was too busy enjoying his companion to care.

Mr. Okamoto soon followed with hot _sake_ \- home brewed, he was keen to add - as he placed the porcelain bottle and cups down between them.

“It is customary in Japan to serve each other drink as a symbol of companionship,” the man explained enthusiastically and then clasped his hands together in front of him, standing in wait for the two of them to begin their charade.  It reminded Sansa of the playdates she and her siblings had to endure when they were younger, forced friendships all because their mothers got on.  She didn’t remember any of her playdates being like Petyr, though.  None of them looked at her the same way, or grinned at her quite so devilishly.

Wordlessly, Sansa poured a cup for Baelish and he for her, each watching the delight in Mr. Okamoto’s face as they raised their cups.

“ _Kampai_ ,” the old man prompted, and they repeated to each other, Sansa catching the dark dim pools of Petyr’s eyes before taking a hearty mouthful of the liquor.

The stuff could strip off wallpaper it was so strong.  She spent the next few seconds getting over her numb salivary glands and regaining enough sensation to form a wide smile at Mr. Okamoto.  With a bow, he left to go into the back room.

Baelish let out a stiff breath, as if finally relaxing, but she wasn’t sure why. 

“So, now that’s over with…now that we’re _friends_ ,” he sneered at their little _sake_ ritual, “Why don’t you tell me about your meeting at the Treasury?  I hope you’re not looking for a new job?” He quipped.

She made a mental note to keep better tabs of everything she said to him before replying. “No, actually it was just a review and some verifications.”  She paused.  “They’re bankrolling me on my next assignment.”

Bankrolling.  She let the word hang heavy in the air.

Bankrolling was more than just paying someone to go from one office to another, it wasn’t a slightly generous food allowance or a chauffeured Mercedes at the company’s expense.  This was a licence for her to set up an entirely new story – she could buy clothes and watches, rent villas, lease cars – whatever was needed to seamlessly buy her way into the life she needed to get the job done, whatever that job was. 

It was freedom, to a degree, but convincing superiors that you were the right person with the right plan was always a challenge.  Do you need to infiltrate?  Does it have to be so expensive?  The government is on an austerity budget, you know?  She’d dealt with these questions at the Treasury, very well according to Willas, even though they were only starting her off small, giving her a chance to prove her worth.

The point, though, was that ‘bankrolling’ meant high-stakes, and Petyr Baelish was just the man to know.

His eyes flicked up to hers, “Bankrolling.  Really?”  He dragged it out a little slower, collecting his thoughts.  A glimmer in those tricky eyes of his, his whole body seemed to turn towards her with a look of interest and, if she dared to believe it, pride. “How long?”

“Three months,” she replied with a sip of her _sake,_ but more prepared for the sting this time.  “But there’s the potential to extend to five months if they think it pertinent.”

“And what will you be doing?”

She had looked around questioningly before remembering that Baelish would already have thought about discretion and risks.

She explained that she was being sent to track down a man – well, a boy really – he’d got himself mixed up in a diamond smuggling ring which has funded a number of terrorist attacks across North Africa.  He was but a small cog in a large machine, someone looking to make a quick buck after his family lost their fortunes in the credit crunch, but nonetheless, he was part of an operation that had managed to dupe a number of high net worth individuals out of over half a billion pounds – _British_ money that was being plugged into the same activities that British and other NATO armed forces were so desperately trying to defeat.  He was the only name they had managed to attach to the whole operation, and she had to find him and get him.

Sansa had finished explaining, waited for his reply, only to be met by silence. Was she expecting him to say anything?  She wasn’t sure.  She inhaled deeply, feeling the damp spiced air rise up from the other side of the counter.  She realised this task was probably peanuts for the renowned Petyr Baelish even though it was the biggest thing she’d ever done.  He wouldn’t need three months, and she probably shouldn’t either.

“It’s simple, I know –” She added self-consciously.

“No, no. It’s a step up from being a courier service, that’s all that matters,” he smiled encouragingly.  It was, she thought, a genuine and almost... _paternal_ kindness.

Sansa nodded and looked into the bowl of soupy meat and vegetables that had been dumped in front of her.  She was so hungry that she could have drowned in it, whatever it was.  She then looked up at Petyr, unsheathing some chopsticks while grimacing slightly at his bowl and popping a piece of the glistening, pale meat into his mouth.

“So, how was my order?” She asked, suspecting she knew the answer.

He swallowed hard. “Very… springy.” 

“What is it?”

“Horumon – pig intestines and offal.”

“Oh,” she tried to stifle a laugh unsuccessfully.

His eyes had narrowed at her, but playfully, and he’d valiantly refused her offer to share the duck he’d ordered for her. 

“You know,” he said after a few minutes of silence, “These things are as big as you make them.  If you play your cards right then you may be able to get more out of the boy rather than just handcuffing him.  Maybe you can figure out his network or get some names of people higher up the food chain.”

She gulped a mouthful. “You think _I_ can talk him into giving up information?”  She thought of what she could possibly give the boy.  “I have nothing to offer him in return… except maybe a reduced prison sentence if he gives us enough information.”

Petyr scrunched his nose, shook his head. “Olenna and her minions in government don’t like doing that.  They’re old fashioned conservatives; believe everyone should serve their full time without short cuts.” He neatly dabbed his mouth with a napkin, placed it back down and leaned further towards her. “Everyone wants something, Sweetling, and when you know what a man wants, you know who he is and how to move him.  What does _your_ man want?”

She let the piece of meat that she had just spent a good minute trying to catch fall from her chopsticks as she looked, startled, into the burning lights of his eyes.

“Um… well, he has two children.” His look didn’t change but she already felt it was a lousy idea.  “Maybe he wants to protect them?  I – I could promise some sort of security?  And maybe for their mothers as well?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, drawing back a little, “But I’m not sure it’ll make much of a difference.  You see, a _good_ father’s first priority is to keep his children safe – he would already have something planned and whatever you offer him wouldn’t make a difference.  Take your parents as an example, they set you and your siblings up for life, am I right?  No one could have held them to ransom.”

She shifted awkwardly, not wanting this to be about her, and curious to know how he knew about her family money.  She finally nodded.

“A _bad_ father, on the other hand, wouldn’t care whether his children were safe or not, so it still wouldn’t make a difference.”

She pursed her lips, “Well I – ”

“You said _mothers_? Plural?”

“Yes,” she answered mechanically.

“Is he still with either of them?”

“No.”

“Did he ever marry either of them?”

“No.  Both relationships lasted less than a year,” she added, knowing where this was going, “Neither were exclusive.”

His handsome features suddenly changed into a wide grin, a wolf’s smile.

Her eyebrow raised to show her obvious reluctance.  “So, you think I should _seduce_ him?”

He raised his hands in mock defence. “You only have to give as much as you are willing to – flirt a little, kiss him goodnight…Maybe more.  It just sounds like your man has a weakness for a pretty face.”

Her eyes naturally dropped down into her bowl, before looking up at him again. “But I don’t know how to do that…” She hated the shake in her voice.

He gave her a knowing smirk, “Oh, I think you do.” She felt her heart drop at the way he looked at her, equal parts charming and menacing.  “Do what you did with the boy in Singapore. Charm him. Entrance him. Bewitch him.” His voice had dropped to a husky whisper.

She breathed a laugh. “I didn’t _do_ anything,” she continued chasing a piece of duck around her bowl, feeling his eyes watching her pathetic effort. “It was a fluke that he came up to me and I didn’t _need_ to make contact with him at all there.  There was no pressure.”

“He’ll come to you, I’m sure of it.”  As he said that he reached over and took her hand and chopsticks within his own.  She didn’t know what he was doing but watched him gently stroke and manoeuvre her delicate hand, entranced by his fingers. “Just don’t seem too eager,” he continued to talk as he moved.

He withdrew his hands a little, having placed her chopsticks in the right grip.  He gently moved her index finger to show how to work them and she stared like her hand was a foreign object, mimicked the movement of the sticks that he had shown her and tried to eat with the new grip.  She’d never been told how to hold chopsticks, just clutched them up with a clumsy grip and squeezed her fingers, hoping they would move well enough together to pick up whatever it was she wanted, if not, go for the poke. It got her through a meal, but now she had been shown the proper grip she realised how simple it was as she effortlessly plucked some duck from her stew and popped it in her mouth.

She quickly looked up to see his chopsticks hover momentarily over a small piece of paper that chef had placed just behind his bowl, almost completely out of her sight.  His chewing slowed.  Then he had suddenly picked up the note with his chopsticks, plunged it into his broth and looked up at her as if nothing had happened.  Maybe nothing had happened, it was so fast.  But she was sure it had, you can’t image such a weird sequence of events like that.

 

It wasn’t long before the chef cleared away their bowls and _sake_ cups.  They made idle conversation, bid farewell to Mr. Okamoto before going out onto the street and main road to hail a cab.  She went through the motions but found herself replaying moments of their dinner.

“Your night isn’t over, is it?” She said, more as a statement rather than a question.  They had been in the cab for a little while, just long enough to shake the cold that had crept through to their bones.

He raised an eyebrow at her, “What makes you say that?”

“That piece of paper you got in the restaurant…” she said, trailing off after she saw Petyr give a furtive glance around the cab, then lean forward to the panel that separated driver and passenger.  Sansa watched, alert, as he slowly slid a small plastic cover off to reveal some wires.  He yanked one, it appeared he’d chosen randomly but probably hadn’t.  He then leaned back in his seat again and smiled that wonderful smile at her.

Reading her face, he leaned into her ear, “Cab drivers – probably the best intelligence gatherers in London, only we never know who they’re working for.”

She nodded in understanding.

He had probably expected her to say something but she was dumbfounded, again, so he prompted.  “You were saying?”

She turned to face him, “The piece of paper at the restaurant, it wasn’t a receipt because we didn’t pay for the meal,” she stated. “I can only assume it was a note of some sort?”

“Well,” he smiled appraisingly, “Aren’t you observant?”

“I’m not _that_ incompetent,” she replied jokingly, a deeper part of her wondering if that was exactly how he saw her. “I know you didn’t take me to that restaurant to eat pig intestines or to drink Mr. Okamoto’s dreadful _sake_.”

He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, sighed in defeat. “Mr. Okamoto used to be a general in the Japanese Army.  Eminent in his day – he and some of his friends that you saw there helped rid Japan of Nazi sympathisers and make it the trustworthy ally it is today.  He still has contacts and it helps me keep in touch with what is going on out there.”

Was that _a victory_?  Small, and a devil of a job, but it was a taste victory that she wanted more of. “You told the taxi driver to go to Rostow Street after he dropped me off.  What did the note say was at there?”

“You need to work on your subtlety,” he chuckled.

“I’m just asking because I know that Rostow Street can’t be where you live, I know what’s there and it’s a just a string of nightclubs.”

His face didn’t change, “I take it you’ve been there, then?”

She snorted, ungracefully, “Never! My friend, Jeyne, was desperate to go when we both turned 18 but they’re expensive and just filled with – ”

“ – Rich, fat, balding, old men?" He asked with a crooked smile, "That’s exactly the point.”

She smiled to match his. “Funny, I thought you were the kind to go for someone younger and more spritely. I actually thought you’d go for women but I can see how I may be wrong there,” she teased.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Tell me, do you often imagine the type of people I take to my bed?”

“No.” She insisted quickly.  Her cheeks rushed with blood for some unknown reason, but the darkness shielded her. 

“Hmm,” he narrowed his shaded eyes at her, “You have a tell, you know?”

“Wh- ”

“When you lie, the left side of your lip tightens.”

She was sure she hadn’t just lied.  She had never thought of him and his sexual partners, had she? No, he must be fucking with her again.  Amazing how he could go from charming to devilish in an instant, his lips pulled back into that snarling grin, out for blood.  A reminder for her to never forget who he really was.

“It’s hardly noticeable to most,” he continued, “But you’ll want to work on it if you’re ever up against enemy agents.  They’d be trained to catch it.”

She was thinking about all the times she’d been caught out lying when she was younger.  She, obviously, didn’t know that her mother and father were trained to pick these things up but now it explained so much. Maybe she did have a tell.

“Politicians, diplomats, businessmen.”  He said, filling the silence.  “They are all in those sad little clubs waiting to be pumped with drugs and alcohol.  Waiting to spill their secrets.  There are a couple of people I’m very interested in who are going to be there tonight.”

“But you won’t tell me who they are?  Or why you’re interested in them?”

“Not tonight, Sweetling.” He blinked slowly at her as she turned her face to the window.

Outside, she hadn’t noticed when, but the shops and restaurants had turned into houses and 4x4 cars.  She knew they were close to her family’s house that she was still living in.

“I’ve got it,” he said when she had reached in her bag for money.

“Oh,” she pressed the clasps of her bag back together, “Well then, thank you Mr. – Bael –”

“Petyr.  Call me Petyr.  I think we can do out with the formalities after tonight.”

“Well then, thank you, Petyr,” she smiled. Then she crouched out of the taxi. 

She turned back once she was out, missing the way his eyes had dropped to watch her legs as she left. “You should call me Sansa.”

“Goodnight, Sansa.” He stressed her name with a faint hiss.

She was about to swing the door shut when his hand stopped it from within. “Oh, and Sweetling?” Her eyes widened, “There are many words to describe you, but I would never call you incompetent.”  He flashed a wicked smile then pulled the door shut for her, her hand still hovering somewhere mid-air when the taxi pulled away.

 _Many words._ Good or bad? It hung in her mind as slowly she remembered where she was.

Her keys dropped into the dish by the telephone as she walked in, her eyes catching on a small spot on the wall.  It was raised against the rest, barely visible by day but evident when picked out by the moonlight.

A blemish.  A scar.  A bullet wound, hastily plastered over.  Below she could see the slightly different colours of wooden flooring, where some panels had been replaced.

This place was a suffocating reminder.  It wasn’t her home – there was nothing warm or inviting or safe about it - it was just a house with her name on the deed.  She’d lived with that feeling for a while, learnt to forget (or at least, suppress) the past but tonight everything felt more empty and soulless than usual.  Or maybe she just felt more alive today than she had been for years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're moving along now and I just wanted to say Sansa's backstory is coming up soon (as well as other stuff).
> 
> I hope it's still going along a good line. Let me know what you think!


	7. Another Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm expecting that many people will have questions after this chapter and the answers will come, I promise. This has to set the scene before I can go fully into Sansa's backstory next chapter.
> 
> Warning: mild descriptions of torture, but I thought I'd let you know.

Petyr flopped down on his bed, head spinning and muscles aching as he pulled off his shoes.  He wasn’t drunk.   The last dose of alcohol he had was that godawful _sake_ and that was now, oh, eighteen hours ago.  Since then he’d just let everyone else drink around him while he had a glamorous water on the rocks with a lime twist.  He had to keep his mind sharp whilst everyone else’s went to mush.

Now he was just exhausted to the point of delusion.

He threw his body back into the cheap mattress and waited for sleep to come to him.  But his body was ‘over tired’ – forty-six hours of no sleep and a pounding, ringing head yet his body wouldn’t succumb.

In its slightly confused and deranged state, his mind drifted from strobe lights to posh accents to red corsets to pig intestine broth. 

The Japanese restaurant felt like a lifetime ago…

She was so beautiful, young, bright, malleable.  Dangerous to place in his hands. 

Sansa Stark.

_Stark._

It had been so long since he’d given any thought to a Stark.  It must be a coping mechanism because every Stark he’d met had brought some form of misery to him.  Brandon had sliced him down the middle over Cat, his childhood love; and Ned had got him locked up in a room, again, within an inch of his life.

In fact, it wasn’t just that he hadn’t thought of Starks, it was that he hadn’t thought of _It_ – the whole ordeal – for at least two years.  He had stopped letting himself wonder what happened and where it all went wrong.

Actually, he knew where it went wrong.  It went wrong the moment Olenna and MI6 let their better judgement escape them, when they sent Ned out to the Far East all those years ago, hungry for revenge. Petyr wished he’d known that when he was later sent out there – that Ned had been Robert Baratheon’s friend.  Then he would have known to expect the messiness, and maybe he could have avoided everything.

He remembered Ned explaining it to him in a dingy Chinese warehouse where they hid their gear.  Guns hidden behind boxes of baby milk powder. “I have to do this, Baelish. Robert was like a brother to me,” he had said, with that crazed look in his eyes.

Ned and Robert had apparently grown up together before Ned joined MI6 and Robert took control of KL Pharmaceuticals, his father’s small company.  Robert Baratheon had made some very good decisions, so the company grew into one of the biggest producers of over-the-counter medicines and cough drops in Europe.  The addition of his wife, Cersei, (and her family money) made him one of the most prolific manufacturers of medicinal drugs in the entire world. 

He was somewhat a crowd pleaser, ‘charitable’ as others may call him, and donated drugs for HIV and Malaria all around the world earning him recognition.  There were pictures of Robert with every imaginable world leader, the Pope, even Sting.  And of course, he was wealthy, and with that came all the debauchery that got him front and centre in the newspapers and an early ticket to the grave

The problems arose after that, when he left the company to his son, Joffrey.  Joffrey wasn’t of age yet, still a boy, and under the guardianship of his mother who turned out to be a piece of work.  Cersei Baratheon neé Lannister was about as morally deficient as they came – even Petyr could see that and his standards were never high for these things.  As the nominated CEO of the company, she wanted to significantly change the direction of KL Pharmaceuticals.  She had fired many of the board members, appointed her own confidantes (including members of her family) and soon began dabbling – off the books, of course – in chemical weapons. 

CS gas, nerve agents, blistering agents – if you saw such an attack then it was probably something to do with KL Pharmaceuticals.  But there was no solid proof.  It was very well hidden – well woven – and KL Pharmaceuticals still looked like a wholesome family company.  Few knew about it, perhaps only some governments had suspected and tried to investigate them to no avail.  They even tried to cripple the company in courts, catching them for unrelated tax issues – anything that cut off the money – but that didn’t work either. 

The only thing they could do was send in agents to find proof, perhaps destroy the facilities.

That was where Ned came in.  He wanted to go out there. It was his friend’s legacy after all, being turned to terrorism, and Robert’s children deserved better.  Little did he know what a monster the eldest son was, took straight after his mother (rumours were there was none of Robert’s blood in him) and continued her work when he came of age.

Petyr joined a year later in the Far East, where the majority of the chemical facilities were set up, some legit and others not.  He walked, unknowingly, into Ned’s haphazard plans.  They were heavy-handed and excessive.  MI6 was meant to be about covert operations not overt operations, as Petyr would often try to remind him.

They clashed all the time. 

Sometimes it even got physical, which Petyr never cared for, but words were slow to get through to Ned.  He could still feel Stark’s tight grip on his neck, the hard wall hitting the back of his head from one time in Baiqizhen.

They just had different methods.  If Petyr wanted to target one facility, Ned wanted another; if Petyr wanted to lay low and gather intel, Ned grew frustrated and did something, usually foolish and ostentatious.  Ned would march in, let everyone see him, and just set fire to a facility.  Petyr would much rather cut off the electricity supply 10 kilometres down the road, let the plant overheat and explode by itself – taken by its own noxious chemicals and never drawing attention to himself.

Ned was thoughtless and his handler, Walder Frey, let him be thoughtless.  Petyr wanted nothing to do with that.  He wanted to be invisible and that wouldn’t happen if he hung close to the half-witted Stark, so he left to do his own thing.

The next he heard of him Ned was dead.

Then he was dragged from his decrepit flat in some Japanese suburb and flung into an even more decrepit basement.  The tiles, he remembered, were ice cold beneath his bare feet, the air smelling like fish, urine and that troublingly sweetish odour of rotting flesh.

When he was thrown in here he hadn’t thought much of it.  He’d been in places a lot grimier than this and that was usually after a good deal of pain which he hadn’t had to go through yet.  He thought it was really quite strange that the Lannisters should bother to do this: put him in a well-lit room, feed him twice a day and empty his waste bucket rather than simply kill him like they did Ned.

He wondered how long it would take for Olenna to figure out he’d been caught and get him out of here. 

He still can’t believe it took him so long to realise that MI6 wouldn’t get him out.  Because they were the ones who put him in.

Three of their men were sent over to 'question' him.

“Tell us why,” they would keep asking, between the hit.  Petyr had a favourite.  One of the men Olenna had sent had a particularly meaty hand which seemed to hurt less than the hands of his skinnier colleague and the one with the rings. 

He would always answer, “Why what?”  Because, despite slapping him around in a room for days, he had no idea what he was being accused of, what _his_ part in it was.  They mentioned something about London and that Ned was dead, but agents died in the field all the time, especially reckless ones like Stark.  Why was this suddenly thought to be an inside job?  What was the evidence?  What was the evidence against _him_?

Evidence.  Petyr scoffed in his troubled sleep.

Who needed evidence?  It was not a law court – no rule of law, no fair trials – it was a grimy basement with only rats and cockroaches presiding over the affairs.

He had accepted soon after that they had already decided he was guilty for this crime that he didn’t commit, and that he was going to die for it.  God had forsaken him, luck had forsaken him and the law had forsaken him. He wasn’t a great believer in any of them but now he was sure there was no point. All he had ever had in life was himself, and now that he couldn’t save himself that was the end.

The choice was now whether to kill himself or let them kill him.  He decided it should be himself. It was one of the few promises he had ever made in life that he intended to keep: that when he died in there, it would be on his own terms.

So he didn’t eat or drink.  And it really pissed them off. 

The meaty man with an overgrown beard had bothered to sit down with him one day.  He felt his chubby hand clutch the back of his neck and wrench Petyr up to look at him through his flickering eyes, barely able to open with the lack of energy.

Petyr had felt an unusual power – he felt the same surge of power run through him at the memory – because, although he was in a pathetically weak state of having no food or water, it was clear that _they_ were the ones getting desperate.  They knew what Petyr knew: that a human can’t last much longer than seven days without water, and that he was already five and a half days through.  If they didn’t break him soon then he would die without giving them anything.

He had woken a little while later to the feel of his mouth being wrenched open with a cold steel implement.  The man with thin bony fingers was forcing a rubber tube down his throat. 

Petyr hadn’t been able to make a sound for a day since he was so parched but he had wheezed and bellowed when that happened, his hands struggling against the rope ties.  Then the tube went so far he couldn’t shout anymore.  He saw the unaffected face of one of the men, clay jug in hand and poised over a funnel.  The burning, drowning feel as the water ran through the tube –

Petyr shot up from his mattress, gagging and gasping.  His breath laboured as he braced himself on his knees, looking around him to see his grey apartment, daylight peaking through the drawn curtains and no sign of the large man or rubber tubing.

He’d fallen asleep at some point.  It seemed, for an entire day.

He rubbed a palm over one of his sleepy eyes.

“Fucking Starks,” he muttered to himself as he scuffled over to the bathroom. 

Perhaps it was irrational to blame everything on them but he was sure Starks spelled bad news.  _Sansa_ would be bad news for him.

He opened the vanity cupboard in his bathroom and squeezed about half a tube of toothpaste on his brush.

To this day, he still doesn’t know what exactly happened.  He was just released, told to take a week off and then get on with it.  No explanation for why he was suddenly deemed innocent.  He had to _guess_ they found the real perpetrator.  

He had to find out through the news that the MI6 building in London had been stormed by a terrorist group.  Thirty-three dead.  Amongst them was Cat.

He had loved her once, maybe the smallest part of him still held onto her as the first and only love of his life, yet he carried on, no questions asked about how she died.  Not even when he noted the distinct absence of Walder Frey in any MI6 affairs.  

He didn’t know if he didn’t _want_ to ask anyone or if he felt he _couldn’t_ ask, but he’d now waited three long years for answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps a little confusing? I'm trying to put you well and truly in Petyr's mindset so you can get that tired confusion, that low opinion of Ned and his methods, and every question and doubt you have as a reader is exactly the same as him but for the last three years.
> 
> Sorry for the lack of conversation and no Sansa, we'll spend time with her soon :)
> 
> Let me know what you think x

**Author's Note:**

> I almost didn't publish for fear of ruining two fandoms and because I know I should actually try and finish something I've started but I wanted to throw this out there. I know there's another new contemporary/spy piece about these two, which I'm loving, but I think this will be suitably different.
> 
> Let me know if it seems like a interesting enough idea x


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